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Common Core Sample: Plumbing the Dark Mysteries of National Standards
February 16, 2012 | Gaetan PappalardoI'm cranky. Are you? I've just been a downright Scrooge, though I really don't mean to. And I didn't know why until today. You see, for the last three months I've been aligning and adding the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to all of my lesson plans. And, like drinking wine tainted with an undetectable, scentless, tasteless, and usually in powder form, poison, it's been secretly making me ill.
Maybe it's been the recent blogs and articles about the CCSS that opened my eyes or the recent workshop I attended on aligning the CCSS. Not sure. But I do know that I'm not usually cranky, except when I'm hungry.
Raising the Bar
I can feel there's a transformation going on within the kids in my classroom, and I have my suspicions that these standards are playing a not-so-insignificant part. Right now it's only a minor morph, but I feel it. They are growing up, maturing, thinking deeper and wider. In my eyes, they're more like eleven. But they don't know it. ("I'm eight, Mr. P." "No, you're eleven, darnit! Act like it. It's standard now.") CCSS has pushed me to push my students two, three, four levels above their heads. I'm all about pushing, getting the most out of my students. But right now I feel like I'm trying to push a slimy oyster into a slot machine. It's just not going to happen. And the CCSS is telling me that what I'm teaching is standard, middle of the road stuff. Like I said, cranky.
It's this constant tug-of-war between what's standard (Do we really have a standard student? A standard teacher? A standard learner?) and what eight-year-olds can physically and mentally do, what their physiology allows them to create, deduce, interpret and analyze.
Sure, I want my students to excel. I want them to be able to...
LA.3.RI.3.3 - [Grade Level Standard] - Describe the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.
Absolutely! That would be awesome. And I want them to...
LA.3.RL.CCR.8 - [Anchor Standard] - Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence.
Eight-year-olds, dude.
Muddying the Waters
This is all in good intention, but maybe... I've got it! Maybe my pissy mood is rooted in the standards' utter lack of a clue regarding the machinations of the third grade mind. When a third grader delineates an argument, what does it look and sound like? And more importantly -- what will mastery look like?
Man, I don't know. And I can't find a thing about it. If we need to be UBD-ing it, we need to know the end point before we can make a plan to get there. Right? I wouldn't attempt to teach someone how to play the blues like Muddy Waters without making them listen to Muddy first. If the state and government want students to achieve on a higher level, teachers, students and parents probably should know what that level looks like. Right now, the end is muddy.
The standards look good on paper. They go deep on paper. But . . . teachers have been teaching for a long time in a NCLB mind-set -- shallow, watery skills and memorized facts to pass a test at the end of the year. Kind of like a temporary tattoo. On paper, the CCSS embeds deeper ink, but time is needed to turn the ship away from the iceberg. And it's a big ship, my friends. Millions of students need to be rewired. Time, time, time. Time is needed for deconstruction and reconstruction of the student and the teacher. It's probably not a good time to start a new way to evaluate teachers, but so many states are in this accountability frenzy that is doesn't matter. How many teachers will lose their jobs because of students not cutting it with the new standards? That's a bit of a concern, especially when fifty percent of teacher evaluation is based on an assessment directly conceived from the CCSS.
A National Standard
All but five states have adopted the CCSS. This is the closest that the United States has ever been to a countrywide standardization. I've been thinking about this, and I'm not sure if it's good or bad. If the standards live up to the hype, then it's good? When I learned to play tennis, I had to break a few bad habits before I could thoroughly practice for perfection. If I hit a rotten forehand four hundred times it's still a rotten forehand (probably worse). Can't blame my effort. Hopefully the CCSS is not rotten. However, I don't think it matters because we've already jumped off the diving board. I just hope there's water in the pool. But seriously, if something is grand and standardized, is it no longer grand? When I visited the Nancie Atwell Center for Teaching and Learning, I saw all teachers teaching the same way, but it was marvelous and real and I would want my own children to experience such an education. The whole school ran on the same systems and believed in the same philosophy. It worked for them. I guess you can say it was standard, but it is an honest and real education. Thomas Newkirk, in his article The Text Itself brings up a very good point that we should all be aware of as we attempt to teach and live under the shadow of CCSS: "Bad things happen to good ideas when they become mandates."
Will national standards raise the United States out of the muck and grime? Will it save our souls from the nuclear fallout of NCLB? In the words of Butt-head, "Uh, no." It's too grand of a scheme to work, right? It's too vast and open for interpretation. What really matters is what's going on in the classroom day-to-day, hour-to-hour and minute-to-minute. The small stuff, brothers and sisters.
What experiences have you had with the CCSS?
Do you think it will lead to a national curriculum?
What pressures? Stress?
What successes?
Comments (22)
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Warning
Since my last call for reflection, I have removed a few posts that continued the argumentative tone. I will continue to do so if there are any more posts that continue in this vein.
Deep breaths, everyone
We always appreciate a spirited discussion but when it turns nasty, it's time for reflection. Are you here to help improve education or to win your point? We support constructive exchange of ideas. Please keep it both constructive and an exchange. Thank you!
Probably not, M.A. You're a
Probably not, M.A. You're a pedant and a bully, so I'll decline.
Quote:Perhaps so. I read and
Perhaps so. I read and took in the correction without need of your help.
Then how about a retraction of this statement, since you went out of your way to criticize me for the same mistake you made?
"M.A., for someone as supposedly adept at evaluation as you, you sure don't understand what the other writer is saying: that the children are eight and nine years BEHIND"
Thanks
Thanks, Kimberly, for clarifying that point.
Perhaps so. I read and took
Perhaps so. I read and took in the correction without need of your help.
The point is that we all sit around talking this to death, while the people who are supposed to be the experts leave out the key component without getting called on the carpet. Curriculum is nothing new. Standards are nothing new. It's the "making sure students learn the curriculum, and measure their learning" that is the crux of the matter. These lazy bums sit around like the tailors making the emperor's new clothes, preening and fawning over Wilhoit, and NOTHING GETS DONE...
As a friend liked to say, "He oughta be horsewhipped." I remember emailing Wilhoit years ago with concerns about the assessment portion. He deigned to ask a gofer to reply, telling me that that was their next component. Looks as if he's going to do what people always do in education: leave the hard part up to the befuddled, confused teachers who also happen to be the soldiers in the trenches, and the result is what Gaetan is struggling with. I can take a good old fashioned argument, but I can't take sycophants.
Cautiously Opptomistic
In California, it would be hard to have less relevant, developmentally inappropriate standards than we have been struggling with for the last 12 years. I really like that the CC standards come from what we want for our kids: to be prepared to succeed at college and in the workplace. The writers then teased it out by grade level so one builds on the next. Such an improvement from our rag-bag existing standards.
I agree that it would be a good thing to have more guidance for teachers as to what specific standards might look like in practice. These standards are really, really different from business as usual in Ca schools in I think, some powerfully good ways.
Relevance, high level thinking, cross curriculum collaboration, leading to project-based learning I hope. The CCS are revolutionary and will take time and training to implement, assess and evaluate the whole thing.
I really hope teacher evaluation will wait until we have time to get the hang of it and get the kinks out. But let's give 'em a try, I'm actually kind of excited, even though I'm a comfortable veteran teacher. How great to have a shot at California kids being competitive in the global market place and as critical-thinking citizens.
Quote: M.A., for someone as
M.A., for someone as supposedly adept at evaluation as you, you sure don't understand what the other writer is saying: that the children are eight and nine years BEHIND.
I don't think you understood her, either. Read her response. Besides, for any student to be 8 or 9 years below grade level, they'd have to be very low functioning and would most certainly have qualified for special education services by now.
My point was that we are
My point was that we are trying to teach the same things to 8 and 9 year olds that we used to teach to 10 and 11 year olds or even beyond that.
We do have a vocational track, however they still have to pass many classes beyond vocational. The advent of the core standards seems to be causing a push down of standards rather than a deeper learning/thinking into what was already being taught. I'm not kidding when I tell you that my 7th grader is doing physics that my husband learned in college. My husband is a licensed civil engineer. Why does my 7th grader need this. I'm disturbed that there is confusion between higher level thinking and just learning things sooner. How many careers require their employees to know all forms of energy transfer, etc.? These are things that we used to take when we started thinking about a major. In highschool we could take classes that would prepare us to go to college with a certain major in mind. I did not take physics because I knew my major would not need it. Now we are starting those standards in 7th grade and lower. This is giving slow learners and MI students very little options. My son is struggling now-what will happen in highschool?
I never intended to make a comment that implied anyone "just gets an IEP". Every state is accountable to NCLB. NCLB makes it very clear that all students who are MI and above are to pass the same standards. This leaves very little room for differentiaton. I can and do differentiate in my classroom all the time and I know my students will show growth. However, many are not going to be able to keep pace with the new curriculums being introduced to meet the common core standards. Their needs are not being met. Our high average to high students will be fine. Our life skills students will be fine. Our low average to borderline students will not make it without some changes. For example, please design a curriculum with four years of math for those students. Four years will now be required to get a diploma. Maybe if they count taking Algebra II twice, my son might get to graduate. There is no room for non-college bound students anymore.
M.A., for someone as
M.A., for someone as supposedly adept at evaluation as you, you sure don't understand what the other writer is saying: that the children are eight and nine years BEHIND. As for Pennsylvania, they were and are a leader in many educational initiatives, but no need to denigrate other people, is there?
One writer said:
..during the last round of standards alignment, I saw twenty teachers take twenty different approaches and come up with twenty different ways to make their curriculum "meet" the standards. Some would bend the meaning and intent of the standards, simply to continue teaching the same material, or to show that they indeed have "covered" all of the standards.
We need networks of educators discussing the outward reflections you seek for each and every standard...
Great point. This is the problem of an unaligned curriculum/instruction/assessment. It's easier than hell to write curriculum. The hard part is to do the "outward reflections" or the assessment portion. This is the part that no one likes to do, because when we do that, the magic is over for those mainly interested in a dog and pony show. The supposed "educators" can't hold the cards close to their chests, using them to hold over the students. If people knew what the final assessment looked like, they wouldn't much need teachers or school anymore. A friend and I wrote a bill not long ago, which the head of curriculum and assessment for our state said the state "absolutely" must do--not because of any favors to the students, but because state and federal laws require it; education has been allowed to get away with skullduggery like Gaetan writes about above for too long now, and the unease it is now causing may demonstrate pretty clearly that those days are coming to an end. The bill went like this:
SECOND REGULAR SESSION
House Concurrent Resolution No. 13
95TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVE ERVIN.
4052L.01I
Whereas, students and their parents have the right and the responsibility to have a valid measure of students' academic progress based on actual achievement rather than socio-economic status or other nonacademic variables; and
Whereas, criterion-referenced testing is the most commonly accepted means by which true academic diagnoses, progress, and merit might be attained through "clear" and "measurable" standards, objectives, and assessment items; and
Whereas, our state has developed criterion-referenced testing and curriculum frameworks, along with grade-level expectations, and has begun to align high school exit with college entrance requirements, but has not performed a thorough statewide curriculum audit and alignment:
Now, therefore, be it resolved that the members of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-fifth General Assembly, Second Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, hereby resolve:
(1) That a curriculum audit be conducted for the state of Missouri. An external audit would be preferable, but an internal audit would be acceptable, provided that the personnel involved be trained by professionals. In either case, the audit should be performed or overseen by a company which has conducted at least thirty audits in the past three years;
(2) That, upon completion of the curriculum audit, the state develop a scope-and-sequence of all tested skills, and the skills which would fall between them, which is "clear" and "measurable", and which is fully available to all students, parents, teachers, and any other member of the public who would request it, and that it be published in the form of parallel test items, as well as a description, both "clear" and "measurable" of their content and format;
(3) In order for every student in the state to benefit from the curriculum audit, the state must conduct a deep alignment at the state level, using the "clear" and "measurable" standards, objectives, and assessment items, then develop a user-friendly model curriculum, instruction, and assessment guide to be used or not, according to the preference of the district; and
Be it further resolved that the Chief Clerk of the Missouri House of Representatives be instructed to prepare properly inscribed copies of this resolution for the Missouri State Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills101/biltxt/intro/HCR0013I.htm
The emphasis in this was that the information be published in the form of parallel or mirror test items (or as the other writer said, the outward reflections of the standards), showing exactly what the assessment would look like. Unfortunately, we got a new commissioner who is not as enthusiastic about doing her job as I would like, so we're still working on it. The days of traditional education are limited. I believe that all of this standards stuff is the last gasp of the dinosaur. Except for baby-sitting purposes, schools no longer do anything that parents and communities can't do for themselves. As a matter of fact, people could just start with the ACT or SAT and work backwards. Heck, with PLATO and other software, kids could just jump on the game and be ready to leave school when they're fifteen, sixteen and go straight to college (like my daughter did).